The present invention relates to a regenerative brake control device which regeneratively drives a rotary electric motor used for traveling to thereby obtain regenerative brake force.
There is available an electrically driven vehicle that travels using a rotary electric motor as a traveling power source. The rotary electric motor is driven by electric power charged into a battery. In this kind of electrically driven vehicle, the rotary electric motor is regeneratively driven during deceleration to obtain regenerative brake force. In addition, kinetic energy of the vehicle is recovered as electric energy into the battery due to regenerative power generation. From the viewpoint of energy efficiency, it is preferable that a regeneration amount (regeneration ratio) serving as the regenerative brake force is set so high that a large amount of the regenerative power generation can be obtained. On the other hand, due to increase in deceleration, an adverse influence on drivability increases. Thus, the regenerative brake force during deceleration is necessarily set in consideration of the energy efficiency or the drivability. Therefore, according to some device, a selecting section can be operated to adjust and increase/decrease a regeneration amount (regenerative brake power) to thereby make it possible to control a deceleration state. For example, in JP-A-2005-168283, the regeneration amount (regenerative brake power) is changed in accordance with an operation time on the selecting section.
To adjust the regeneration amount of the regenerative brake force, the driver performs an operation on the selecting section. The operation is defined uniquely in advance. Due to the operation, a regeneration stage which can obtain a desired regeneration amount (regenerative brake force) is selected from regeneration stages among which there is a difference in regeneration amount. Therefore, it takes some time to obtain a deceleration feeling corresponding to the regeneration amount requested by the driver. Accordingly, there is room for improvement in operability. In addition, in the configuration according to JP-A-2005-168283, the regeneration amount is changed in accordance with the operation time on the selecting section. Accordingly, the operation time is required to obtain the deceleration feeling corresponding to the regeneration amount requested by the driver.